January 12, 2016

ReDO, an international collaboration between the Belgium-based Anticancer Fund and the U.S.- based GlobalCures, has published their investigation into diclofenac in the open-access journal ecancermedicalscience.

Diclofenac is a well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) widely used to treat pain in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, migraine, fever, acute… read more

January 12, 2016

The material, called SAC (for self-adaptive composite), consists of sticky, micron-scale rubber balls that form a solid matrix. The researchers made SAC by mixing two polymers and a solvent that evaporates when heated, leaving a porous mass of gooey spheres. When cracked, the matrix quickly heals, over and over. And like a sponge, it… read more

January 12, 2016

Scientists at University College London (UCL) and Nanion Technologies in Munich have developed synthetic DNA-based pores that control which molecules can pass through a cell’s wall, achieving more precise drug delivery.

Therapeutics, including anti-cancer drugs, are ferried around the body in nanoscale carriers called vesicles, targeted to different tissues using biological markers. The new DNA-based pore design is intended to improve that process.

Like neural networks, evolution appears to "learn" from previous experience, which may explain how natural selection can produce such apparently intelligent designs

January 11, 2016

A computer scientist and biologist propose to unify the theory of evolution with learning theories to explain the “amazing, apparently intelligent designs that evolution produces.”

The scientists — University of Southampton School of Electronics and Computer Science professor Richard Watson* and Eötvös Loránd University (Budapest) professor of biology Eörs Szathmáry* — say they’ve found that it’s possible for evolution to exhibit some of the same intelligent… read more

January 11, 2016

Mo Rastgaar, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Michigan Technological University, and his team have developed a drone catcher that can pursue and capture rogue drones that might threaten military installations, air traffic, sporting events, and even the White House — as startled Secret Service officers discovered when one crash-landed on the White House lawn last January.

January 11, 2016

Stanford researchers have invented a lithium-ion battery that shuts down before overheating to prevent the battery fires that have plagued laptops, hoverboards and other electronic devices. The battery restarts immediately when the temperature cools.

The design is an enhancement of a wearable sensor that monitors human body temperature invented by Zhenan Bao, a professor of chemical engineering at Stanford. The sensor is made of a plastic material… read more

Neuroscientists run the ultimate experiment to find out: a "duel" between human and brain-to-computer interface (BCI)

January 8, 2016

It’s a question that’s been debated by philosophers for centuries. Now neuroscientists from Charité –Universitätsmedizin Berlin have run an experiment to find out, using a “duel” game between human and brain-computer interface (BCI).

As KurzweilAI reported last year:
In the early 1980s, University of California, San Francisco neuroscientist Benjamin Libet conducted an experiment to assess the nature of free will. Subjects hooked up to an electroencephalogram (EEG)… read more

May also have a "preventive and therapeutic role in association with early AD-type neurodegeneration"

January 8, 2016

Neuroscientists in Italy and the U.K. have developed cognitive-stimulation exercises and tested them in a month-long experiment with healthy aging adults. The exercises were based on studies of the brain’s resting state, known as the “default mode network”* (DMN).

In a paper published in Brain Research Bulletin, the researchers explain that in aging (and at a pathological level in AD patients), the posterior (back) region of the DMN in the… read more

January 7, 2016

Physicists have developed a new way to test one of the basic principles underlying Einstein’s theory of General Relativity, which states that the geometry of spacetime is curved by the mass density of individual galaxies, stars, planets, and other objects.

Clothing that keeps you warm and windshields that melt ice are two of the possible uses

January 7, 2016

MIT researchers have developed a new transparent polymer film that can store solar energy during the day and release it later as heat, whenever needed. The material could be applied to many different surfaces, such as window glass or clothing.

The new material solves a problem with renewable solar energy: the Sun is not available at night or on stormy days. Most solutions have focused on storing and recovering… read more

Lives of soldiers and others injured in remote locations could be saved with a cell-free protein synthesis device; could also produce custom orphan drugs and personalized medicines at low cost

January 6, 2016

Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientists have developed a device that uses microfabricated bioreactors to produce therapeutic proteins for medicines and biopharmaceuticals. These miniature factories are cell-free, eliminating the need to maintain a living system, which radically simplifies the process and lowers cost, and makes the device easily adaptable for use in isolated locations and at disaster sites.

January 6, 2016

An advanced “molecular prosthetic” — a cell with synthetic gene circuits that can be implanted into an organism to take over metabolic functions that the organism cannot perform itself — has been developed by ETH Zurich scientists.

Previous gene circuits typically monitored only whether one disease-causing molecule (called a cytokine) was present in their environment and if so, produced a single therapeutic cytokine as a response. The… read more

January 5, 2016

Princeton University researchers have captured some of the first near-whole-brain recordings of 3-D neural activity of a free-moving animal, and at single-neuron resolution. They studied the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a worm species 1 millimeter long with a nervous system containing just 302 neurons.

The three-dimensional recordings could provide scientists with a better understanding of how neurons coordinate action and perception in animals.

January 2, 2016

That may be because they are: Earth is rushing along right now at about 30 kilometers per second (almost 19 miles per second) — moving about a kilometer per second faster than when Earth will be farthest from the Sun on July 4, notes Bruce McClure of EarthSky Tonight.*

Or maybe it’s the accelerating pace of new developments? Tech predictions for 2016 are ranging from “Intelligent agents… read more